Remember, when you are talking about “real bullies,” ask yourself who spent a couple of hundred years torturing people who did not believe the Catholic Church line. It sure wasn’t Obama or the Democratic Party.

As such, the percentage of people using birth control should not vary much based upon the health care coverage. However, by extending coverage to those users who were going to use birth control whether the insurance company covered the costs or not, you increase the cost of providing care to those individuals without the benefit of decreased pregnancies. I sincerely doubt that the number of people who would take birth control, but don’t because their insurance doesn’t pay for it, is significant enough to make up for the addtional costs of covering those individuals who would purchase anyway.

This was an astounding claim and has gotten far too little attention.

The other thing that struck me was why this mandate on insurers does not apply to all insured companies. Surely those companies who are not religious organizations or nonprofits are going to want their employees to get contraceptives for “free” also.

Also not pointed out is the faulty math. Sibelius has said that the $600 it costs to buy birth control pills for one year is a burden on women. Yet somehow it is not a burden on insurance companies. She claimed they will save money by providing contraceptives “for free” because that will be cheaper than covering a pregnancy. Yet for this to be the case, none of the women getting these pills can ever become pregnant or the insurer will have to pay for contraceptives AND pregnancy care.

Clearly this can’t fly.

I fail to see how a single payer system is in any way a rational conclusion from all this, other than it makes choice irrelevant for consumers and allows political expediency such as got us the current issue to be the norm for all health coverage and health care decision making. The solution to difficult rationing and resource allocation decisions is rarely (if ever?) best found in the hands of centralized political authority.

The same bundling problems that encourage overuse, drive up costs, and add a costly administrative layer would certainly exist in a single-payer system. The difference would be a complete lack of ANY competitive constraint on those administrative costs or the overall costs of care. At least now there is at least some level of competitive pressure among insurance companies to minimize their operating costs.

Yes, there are adverse selection issues.That’s why the PPACA includes the purchase mandates; it’s the easiest way of dealing with the adverse selection problem when you require coverage for pre-existing conditions.I think the bigger issue, however, is trying to use the existing insurance system as the model for a replacement. I believe insurers are a crafty lot and could come up with innovative products and policies that, while discriminating more, would also provide greater options for more people. But there is little incentive in innovate in the existing system…and even less in the existing political environment.